OIREACHTAS COMMITTEE:THE OUTGOING Irish member of the European Court of Auditors, Eoin O'Shea has said e-mails questioning moves to replace him with Department of Finance secretary general Kevin Cardiff were sent in a "moment of madness".
Mr O’Shea was attending the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs in Leinster House yesterday to give a report on the work of the court, when the controversial e-mail was read out by Labour TD Colm Keaveney.
The message was sent at 10.22pm on October 6th to German MEP Jens Geier, co-ordinator of the Socialist members of the parliament’s budgetary control committee which subsequently rejected Mr Cardiff’s appointment by a single vote.
Mr O’Shea said an “exactly similar” e-mail was sent to the co-ordinator of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) group on the budgetary committee.
In the e-mail, Mr O’Shea, who was nominated by the previous Fianna Fáil-led government, said the Government had decided to replace him on the court of auditors. Without naming Mr Cardiff, he said: “Their suggestion is an Irish civil servant who was responsible for financial supervision during the period of the collapse of the Irish banks.”
He went on to say he believed there would be “further details in respect of this appointment” due to the “Irish prosecutorial interest” in whether or not the State had condoned “the window-dressing of the financial accounts of Irish financial institutions in respect of 7 Billion Euro”.
This referred to deposits of approximately €7.2 billion transferred into Anglo Irish Bank from Irish Life Permanent in 2008 to make the bank’s financial position look healthier than it actually was on the day Anglo’s 2008 accounts were recorded.
Mr Cardiff alerted the Financial Regulator to the transactions in October 2008 after they were pointed out to him by the National Treasury Management Agency.
Mr O’Shea said he had read about these transactions in the book Anglo Republic by Irish Times finance correspondent Simon Carswell. He told committee chairman Joe Costello of Labour: “I shouldn’t have sent that e-mail, I recognised that as soon as I had sent it.”
Identifying Mr Cardiff as the subject of his message, he said: “At that stage I may have been a little angry.” He added: “I was not seeking to influence anybody, I was letting off steam.”
He believed Mr Cardiff would be “a very credible appointment” to replace him. He had met the secretary general a number of times since the e-mail, which was sent in a “moment of madness”.
At a news conference later on job-creation, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore both said they were “disappointed” by Mr O’Shea’s e-mails but they did not comment on suggestions that he might have to consider his position on the Court of Auditors.
Timmy Dooley (FF) said principles of natural justice required that Mr O’Shea should have been informed in advance that the committee would be discussing the contents of the e-mail.
